Bone of Contention
by Thaddeus MacChuzzlewit
Summary: McCoy was the reason Kirk survived Starfleet Academy. Kirk was the reason McCoy couldn't shave his head without getting horrified looks.


Bone of Contention

* * *

Captain James T. Kirk was known for the reckless, brilliant way he tore through life. Jimmy from Iowa had been known for the careless, destructive way he had of careening through life. Most people couldn't see the difference.

But there was a difference.

It was brought about by one Leonard Horatio McCoy.

**0 0 0**

"_Damn fool! You want to be a captain, Jim? Before you're up to caring for your crew, you have to care for yourself."_

Kirk woke up with McCoy's enraged diatribe still echoing around in his aching head.

Actually on second thought, his head didn't ache any more.

He felt a thousand times better than the night before, mostly thanks to McCoy's skills in first aid. He had laughed the advice off then, between bouts of coughing up blood and dodging hypos. But of course that hadn't made Bones any happier. He seemed to take Kirk's health personally: a bit of a new experience for Jim Kirk.

_"I'm tired of saving your sorry ass from a bunch of jealous knuckleheads who think driving away the top student will make them look smarter! This isn't primary school, Jim. Going to the Dean doesn't make you a tattle-tale!"_

Stretching, Kirk eased himself to his feet and wandered over to Bones' desk.

If his friend was ready to attribute Jim's uncanny habit of showing up all over the place to a sixth sense, Jim wasn't about to point out that he had installed a tracking device in Bones' PAD. It was for his own good. The Doc needed someone looking out for him.

Kirk flicked on his own PAD, and with a couple taps he brought up Bones' current location. He had originally considered adding a chip to his friend's clothes. But that could have been a little too obvious, and thankfully Bones carried his leather satchel with him everywhere. He may have been a medical miracle worker, but he still had to study.

The little signal throbbed, and Jim felt a faint surge of guilt as he realised where the good Doc was headed. If Bones was heading down to the less desirable end of town, he was looking for a place to drink, a place to unwind, after spending the night patching him up and waiting to see if his friend would be okay.

It didn't make a lot of sense. If he could take the punches, then Bones should be able to handle patching him up without going into conniptions.

He felt a little surge of guilt. Bones didn't usually head out on the town to drink, unless he was really upset. He had been really upset the night before, but Jim had figured that staying up all night with him he would be too tired to get into much trouble

Oh well.

Jim found his toothbrush under the bed and his jacket in the closet, the latter being more unusual than the former. Then he headed out into the late afternoon air. It was time to drag home a drunken doctor.

**0 0 0**

"What the hell?"

Jim looked down at his PAD, and then up at the building before him.

Hadn't he just made it clear to Bones that they'd have to avoid this establishment in the future because of those knuckleheads? Did he come here so Jim couldn't follow?

When he elbowed his way through the doorway Jim's trademark grin wasn't quite up to its usual wattage, not that anyone else would have noticed. Something wasn't right. Rubbing a hand through his thick blond hair he took in the length of the bar lazily. No knuckleheads. Phew. But no hunched-over doctor either.

Trading a flirtatious smile with a brunette near the pool table, Jim sidled up to the bar and beckoned to the waitress.

"One Bud classic." He waited for the bottle and then dropped a big tip on the counter. "Hey, I was supposed to meet a friend here. Dark haired fellow, brown leather jacket, about my height - he was probably in a really bad mood. Perhaps you saw him?"

She slipped the coins into her apron and returned his smile. "Does he have a bit of a drawl when he talks? Gorgeous eyes and lots of attitude?"

Jim took a sip of his beer. "That's the one. Was he around earlier?"

Curling a length of blond hair around her finger, she tilted her head slightly to look at him. Jim kept his gaze steady and then let a little smile cross his lips.

The waitress sighed and walked down to the end of the bar, an obvious swing to her hips. She knelt down to reach into some shelving and then returned to him, dropping a leather satchel down on the counter.

"Yes. He was here less than an hour ago." Her long painted nails fiddled with the strap of the satchel, but Jim's focus was on checking its contents. "Intense fellow, I thought he was going to start a fight, he looked so angry. But he was quite sweet to me. Put his bag down on the counter and ordered bourbon. He left with that group from the Starfleet Academy as soon as they came in, completely forgot about it."

Jim's head snapped up. "A group from the Academy?"

The waitress nodded, "Four big strapping fellows. They come in sometimes and get really drunk. Not exactly nice boys."

Kirk felt like a bucket of ice had just been dumped over his head. He knew his smile had faltered, but was too busy to recharge it. It couldn't have been coincident. Bones had come here to talk to them because Kirk had refused to.

"Is something the matter, honey?" Forgetting for a minute that they were flirting, the waitress touched his shoulder.

"This is important. Did you get a good look at my friend when he was leaving with them?"

"Well," the waitress was surprised at how much darker Kirk's eyes had suddenly gotten. "I didn't really notice. Sometimes those boys they create a bit of trouble, so I was just glad they were leaving..." She noticed the look on Kirk's face and paused. "But, let me think. Your doctor friend, he was kind of hemmed in, and he did look over here, I thought he would come get his bag but they left so fast. He just looked angry, so I didn't think he was in trouble. Is he?"

Kirk pulled another bill from Bones' wallet and pushed it across to her. He jumped to his feet and frowned. "He better not be."

**0 0 0**

Kirk burst from the bar and looked around. Bones had to be okay. Maybe he had just talked to them, and they had let him go. Bones was just a doctor. He was no threat to them. He was no brawler, and he wouldn't throw the first punch.

It was getting dark, but there was still quite a bit of traffic on the street. Kirk headed for the lane beside the bar, and looked down it. The back of several buildings created a deep canyon of brick and metal, and Kirk headed in, breaking into a jog. He looked down each alley as he passed it, wondering if they had all headed back to the campus already.

He heard a noise, and saw a slightly intoxicated Orelian snoozing in a rusty doorway.

"Hey."

The alien snorted and then blinked up at him. "Huh?"

"Did you see a group of men go by recently?"

For a moment, it looked like the drunk wouldn't answer, but he took a better look at Kirk and then nodded. "Yeah. Saw some men draggin' someone through not that long back." He nodded his head to the left. "Makin' an awful lot of racket they were. They went that-away."

Kirk felt his stomach drop. He nodded his thanks and took off.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He was the one that got in trouble, and Bones was the one that patched him up and got him out of it. It wasn't that Leonard McCoy was a weakling. Far from it. More than a couple times Jim had benefitted from Bones' defence in a fight. The man knew how to throw a punch, and he had the intensity of a bear protecting her cubs when he came to someone's defence.

The problem was that he took his Hippocratic Oath too seriously. It seemed to be inseparable from who he was. He just couldn't hurt someone in his own defence. Kirk had seen it happen over and over. He would be wrapping up a brawl and look over to see Bones up against a wall, blocking blow after blow, unwilling to just finish off his opponent. As soon as he could, he would be mending the people who had just attacked them. Bones would always be a healer first.

It was one of the reasons that Kirk adored his friend. It was also the reason he was terrified for him.

He stumbled to a stop when something reflected the fading light on the ground in front of him. Kirk tapped the object with his foot, realising it was the wrong shape to be a beer bottle. Snatching it up, he recognised a very familiar flask. One that should have been in McCoy's jacket pocket.

"Bones!"

Whipping around in a circle, Kirk couldn't see any sign of them.

He tore up the closest alley, knocking crates out of the way and peering behind every dumpster. When that one was empty he moved on to the next, growing increasingly frantic as he checked out rusted doors and any large piles of trash.

Kirk rounded a narrow corner and almost missed the scuffed shoe poking out from behind an industrial bin. Suddenly the bin was on the other side of the alley and he was skidding to his knees, thoughtless of the dirty pavement.

Bones was slumped against the old brick wall, knees buckled as if he had been shoved up against it and then dropped. His head was drooping sideways toward the wet pavement, and Jim was pretty sure his shoulder wasn't facing the right direction.

"Bones! Bones, I'm here. Wake up!" Shaking, Kirk cupped his hand under Bones' face and then pulled back, startled. It was covered in blood.

Kirk wasn't scared of anything.

Why worry when it wouldn't change anything?

But he was scared now. Bones was not supposed be the one who was hurt.

"Hey, man. Wake up. You need to wake up so I can get you to a doctor." It sounded so wrong to say. Bones should not need a doctor.

Kirk crouched down and placed a hand behind his friend's back. He carefully eased the man away from the wall until he could lay him out flat on the pavement. McCoy's head lolled into the crook of Kirk's arm as he gently lowered him down. His lip was split in two places, and blood was trickling from his mouth as well. Not good. Kirk knew that much.

Pulling his friend's jacket open, Kirk ran his fingers over McCoy's abdomen. It didn't feel right either. Maybe broken ribs. They had really worked him over.

Kirk felt rage swelling within him. He was beyond angry at those stupid men. But the difference was that he was angry at himself before them. It was true. He had thought ignoring his own safety wouldn't endanger his crew, his friends. But that just made things worse.

**0 0 0**

Bones didn't wake up the whole time Kirk sat with him, waiting for the paramedics. When the street lamps switched on he spotted the dark patch on the wall where Bones' head had slammed into it. As soon as they had assessed him, the paramedics had Bones beamed to emergency, and Kirk was left to walk home.

Truth be told, he was devastated. It was out of this world wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

He had to shake himself out of his stupor when they came to talk to him in the waiting room later. Thankfully being his roommate had made Kirk the easiest reachable 'family'. Bones' upper arm was broken, and his clavicle fractured. One broken rib and a slow internal bleed. The thing that made Kirk run for a trash receptacle and vomit was the discovery that Bones' skull had actually been cracked open in the back. He was going to make a full recovery, but the doctor patted Kirk on the back and informed him that if he hadn't discovered McCoy, he would have died of a brain haemorrhage within another couple hours.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong...

"J-mm?

The gruff little noise sent Kirk leaping from his lumpy plastic chair in a tangle of arms and legs.

"Bones!"

McCoy furrowed his brow, shifting on the bed before cracking open a deep brown eye. He winced at the dim hospital lighting and Kirk jumped to put his shadow between McCoy and the light.

"You're awake! I'm here. It's alright. It's Jim, and you're going to be okay, Bones!"

"Whht?

Jim grasped the side of the bed, grinning widely as that familiar scowl crept over his friend's features. "I said it's Jim Kirk here, Bones. And I'm so glad you're awake, and I'm so sorry about... what happened and I've already talked to the Dean and they've been expelled, and I know you got hurt but you're going to be fine and-"

"Jim?" Bones croaked.

"Yes?"

"Shut up. Water. Now."

Fumbling for the glass by head of the bed, Kirk helped his friend take a couple of small sips. The disoriented look in those deep brown eyes began to dissipate, and Bones leaned back against the hospital bed, blinking as he looked at Kirk.

"I guess I'm not dead then. Thought I felt somethin' essential break, but I suppose I could have been wrong." When he saw the colour drain from Jim's face, Bones held up a weak hand. "All right then, I wasn't wrong. Let me guess; I'm never going to be able wear my head shaved again?"

Kirk spluttered. "Excuse me?"

Scowling, McCoy reached up to feel the shorn patches on the back of his head, lumpy with stitches and dermal regeneration. "You think I wouldn't look good with a buzz cut? I went completely shaved for two years in high school."

"And you had friends?"

"Of the female variety too."

Jim laughed, and then his face fell. "You're lying."

With a sigh McCoy summoned up the strength for a full-on doctor glare. "Listen here, Jim. I'm not dead. You're not dead. I look good with long hair and you look better without bruises. So let's just leave it at that."

Kirk opened his mouth to protest, but one angry twitch of McCoy's eyebrow stopped him. "Now I need some rest, so you can just shut off that noisy guilt meter in your head, or you can beat it so I can get some sleep."

"Shutting up."

McCoy eyed him suspiciously, and then settled back on the bed, letting his eyes slip closed. "Good."

Jim nodded silently. Good.

It didn't scare him anymore to see the doctor's face go slack as he fell asleep, because he knew when Bones woke up, all the attitude and glares would be back. That was the way he wanted it, and if it meant standing up for himself and being a little more cautious even when he felt it wasn't necessary, he was more than willing to make that sacrifice.

Of course, cautious-Kirk might look just like careless-Kirk to everyone else. But Bones would know, and maybe it might make this wrong thing worth it in the end.


End file.
